Next Noble Pen Meeting

Nov 2nd, 2017 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Someone asked at the last meeting about pen names.  Here’s an author that became widely known by more than one pseudonym.

Victories

Nathan finished a chapter.

Aime caught up on editing for Scourge.

Education

Authors should have some knowledge of copyright law.  You should know that anything you write is immediately copyrighted.  Registration with the government office (with a fee) strengthens your ability to enforce your copyright.  Rights cover several different types of use.  Some uses can be made of your work without infringing on the copyright.  World-wide, the author is faced with separate registrations under a variety of laws and limits.

US copyright laws have changed from time to time, mostly to extend the coverage.  Cynics have noted that the length of time a copyright provides protection (with registration and renewals) has usually been a little longer than the age of Mickey Mouse.

A search will turn up many explanations of copyright.  The  Writers Write site has a nice summary written by a lawyer in more or less layman’s language.  Here’s another.  The US government Copyright Office gives definitions related to the subject.  Wikipedia has a substantial article.

Titles are not generally protected by copyright, although some caution needs to be exercised as discussed in the 2017 Aug 31 newsletter.

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. ~Lawrence Lessig

Upcoming Schedule

November 2
Nick
Deanna
Stacy H. (held over)

November 9
Laura
Ciuin
Uriah

November 16
Stacie S. (3k)
Nathan (3k)
Deanna (6k)

November 23
Thanksgiving, no meeting

November 30
Open slots

December 7
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 26th, 2017 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

To Kill a Mockingbird was removed from a school curriculum because it contains some bad words.  Never mind the lessons it can teach.  The NY Times has a longer discussion of book banning.

Victories

Deanna found one of her stories published in a literary magazine despite having received a rejection from that organization two years ago.

Uriah joined NaNoWriMo.

Stacie read Aime’s book.

Ciuin scrapped much of the later part of Chessmaster and is rewriting it.

Education

Do you use inspiration from real people to create characters?  Robert J. Sawyer argues that you shouldn’t have to, but the idea of totally making them up goes against something deep inside us, and may be harder than taking features from real people.

Here are ten famous characters modeled on real people.  And this article gives some examples, but lists several reasons why you usually shouldn’t.

If you do use celebrities or real people you have encountered, you need to research the legalities as summarized by a lawyer and this very practical discussion.

I never tell who it is I base my character quirks on in case they get offended, but I do base them on real people. As an actor I see myself a bit like a sponge where I absorb peoples different characteristics. It makes my characters on screen more realistic. ~Emily Blunt

Upcoming Schedule

October 26
Stacie S.
Stacy H.
Aime

November 2
Nick
Deanna (long?)
Aime

November 9
Laura
Ciuin
Uriah

November 16
Stacie S.
Open slots

November 23
Thanksgiving, no meeting

November 30
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 19th, 2017 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The world gets ever more sensitive to hurtful stereotypes.  Now a Dr. Seuss illustration has been found offensive.

Victories

Ciuin has Petty Theft in limited-edition print books, the culmination of ten years of work and worry.  She has the perfect cover picture.

Dylan finished 2nd pass edits on a commission and is writing the master plot for all of his Fedran world.  The plan encompasses 23 works, which includes five novels and a novella.

Eric finished the first chapter of his sequel, with the adventures of Jim’s son.

Uriah wrote a seven-page school paper.

Deanna did revisions.

Education

Some people advise all cliché phrases are to be “avoided like the plague.”  See Wikipedia discussion.  Writer’s Digest offers a short list of overused phrases.  Here’s a much longer list.

I’m not so sensitive to them as to ban all 681 on their list, and feel an occasional one can serve a purpose.  I see nothing wrong with “benefit of the doubt,” for instance, and wouldn’t object to occasional use of “ace in the hole”, “all in a day’s work”, or “crash course.”  I am, however, tired of “drives me up the wall ,” and “flat as a pancake.”

–//–

Backups are vital.   Someday you will need one when you are least prepared. What is the state of your backups if you had a crash RIGHT NOW?

Some people consider it necessary to have at least three copies of any important work, such as on the working computer, on a flash drive, and on a cloud storage service. If you burn CDs or DVDs that can be another option.  You could substitute more flash drives for the cloud service.  A good scheme is to have two or more and rotate which one you update in case you overwrite a version you wanted.

I find it useful to make a copy of the project file now and then with the date inserted into the file name, as  MyBook2017_10_12.doc so that I can go back and look at prior versions (the cloud may only keep old versions for a limited time).

If you know how to use batch files or command lines, this line is handy, with appropriate drive letter and folder name in place of those shown:
xcopy c:\MyBook e:\MyBook\ /D /S /R /I /Y
It will copy any newer-dated or additional files and only those files, from that folder and its subfolders to the other drive.  If the folder has blanks in its name, you must enclose the name in double quotes.  Windows should have made it easy to do this kind of copy, but didn’t.

Upcoming Schedule

October 19
Dakota
Uriah
Ciuin

October 26
Stacie S.
Stacy H.
Aime
November 2
Nick
Deanna
Aime

November 9
Laura
Ciuin
Uriah

November 16
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 12th, 2017 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Recent announcements include the Nobel Prize in literature and the National Book Awards finalist list.

Victories

Aime started another story.

Dylan participated in ICON.

Ciuin sent Petty Theft to press for a small run.  She wrote four school papers.

Stacy is blogging.

Education

The Awesome Indies site has a great list of criteria for a well-written book and has assembled enough excellent educational material on that page and its links for a full-semester course in writing.

You are competing with perhaps a million titles per year.  Self-publishing has become easy and popular.  With that comes a huge volume of material with little quality control, making it hard to sort out the good from the bad.  Awesome Indies has been so overwhelmed with submissions of dubious quality that they now require either good reviews elsewhere or a substantial submission fee.

A few years back, Chuck Wendig the Crude (language warning) posted a rambling rant about the problem, that a lot of people agree with, and the situation has not improved.

In addition to bad writing, Amazon and other ebook purveyors have been plagued for years with trash “books” that may be thrown together without even a readable story.  With a few minutes work on multiple computers, those can be given good reviews to fool a few customers into buying them.

More recently, perpetrators have stolen real book content, used programs to change some synonyms and wordings to evade plagiarism detectors, and posted to Amazon for some quick sales, using several tricks to boost their apparent popularity.

It is also possible to produce automatically generated “books” that are just an assemblage of words that pass some algorithm.  While such a system could possibly be used to gather information on a subject, most such offerings are just spam.

Upcoming Schedule

October 12
Laura
Ciuin
Eric

October 19
Dakota
Aime
Ciuin

October 26
Stacie S.
Stacy H.
Uriah

November 2
Nick
Open slots

November 9
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill